The musings of a husband, father, and retired U.S. Army officer and public school superintendent.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Obvious Move to Take Over Our Public Schools

Independent research in recent months has documented that the nation's wealthiest philanthropic foundations are steering funding away from public school systems, attended by 90 percent of American students, and toward "challengers" to public education, especially charter schools.

By 2010, $540 million -- fully 64 percent of major foundation giving -- was directed to these private groups, including KIPP, Teach for America, the NewSchools Venture Fund, the Charter School Growth Fund, and the D.C. Public Education Fund.

The extent to which these groups will go to supplant the public school system is deeply disturbing.

Despite the growing number of studies showing that charter schools are generally no better -- and are often worse -- than their public school counterparts, "the state and local agencies and organizations that grant the charters," The New York Times reports, "have been increasingly hesitant to shut down schools, even those that continue to perform abysmally for years on end."

This disconnect between the claims of "reformers" bent on privatization and demonstrable outcomes in student performance has been enabled, in large part, by the nation's mainstream media, which has been sold a bill of goods about so-called "school reform." As a result, the agenda of the nation's public school system is at risk of being bought out by a relatively small number of corporate billionaires and their tax-sheltered foundations whose privatization models do more to raise profits than student performance.